The present invention relates generally to carriers for large or heavy objects and more particularly to such carriers employing an open ended object clamp for gripping objects to be transported.
The moving of large objects has in the past been accomplished by electrically powered conventional fork lift trucks which usually necessitates that the object be placed on a pallet compatible with the fork lift truck tangs. There are also numerous hand propelled carts of a general purpose design such as those typically employed by furniture moving companies for transporting refrigerators and the like.
Numerous special purpose carriers for transporting cumbersome objects such as drums or barrels containing liquid chemicals and the like have also been designed and suffer from one or more of the following defects. Such carriers typically cannot pick up a drum from the floor when that drum is laying on its side and further cannot engage such a drum when in the vertical position and against a wall or other obstacle. With such carriers, the drum typically cannot be revolved about its own axis, for example, to properly orient a spout for pouring purposes. Frequently the drum must be hand raised and placed on a pedestal even when in its upright position and away from a wall or other obstacle. Frequently such carriers do not allow the drum to be rotated about a horizontal axis and especially do not allow for a full 360.degree. or more rotation of the drum about a horizontal axis. Typically the structure of such carriers is not adaptable to varying size drums.